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Friday, October 28, 2016

Cli-Fi Alert! ----: THE GUARDIAN UK has published a chapter from Amitav Ghosh's book THE GREAT DERANGEMENT, making it appear as if it is an oped but in fact it is taken directly from his book, and it's that chapter that dismisses sci fi and cli fi and spec fic and ecofction as gutter genres and outhouse genres and ***READ IT and then ***READ THE COMMENTS TOO and ADD YOURS! People in the Uk are loudly pushing back against Dr Ghosh's anti-genre rant and here are some of the comments so far. Finally people are telling Dr Ghosh he is dead wrong and it's time to wake up.

Cli-Fi Alert! ----: THE GUARDIAN UK has published a chapter from Amitav Ghosh's book THE GREAT DERANGEMENT, making it appear as if it is an oped but in fact it is taken directly from his book, and it's that chapter that dismisses sci fi and cli fi and spec fic and ecofction as gutter genres and outhouse genres and ***READ IT and then ***READ THE COMMENTS TOO and ADD YOURS! People in the Uk are loudly pushing back against Dr Ghosh's anti-genre rant and here are some of the comments so far. Finally people are telling Dr Ghosh he is dead wrong and it's time to wake up. THE GUARDIAN UK has published a chapter from Amitav Ghosh's book THE GREAT DERANGEMENT, making it appear as if it is an oped but in fact it is taken directly from his book, and it's that chapter that dismisses sci fi and cli fi and spec fic and ecofction as gutter genres and outhouse genres and ***READ IT and then ***READ THE COMMENTS TOO and ADD YOURS! People in the Uk are loudly pushing back against Dr Ghosh's anti-genre rant and here are some of the comments so far. Finally people are telling Dr Ghosh he is dead wrong and it's time to wake up. READ IT HERE: --https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/28/amitav-ghosh-where-is-the-fiction-about-climate-change-#_=_

but first

A comment took Dr Ghosh's side and defended him:

"I did not see that prejudice everyone here is accusing Dr Ghosh of. Actually, I think he argued in favour of genre novels, but said that they too did not really come to grips with climate change. I tend to agree with that. There are exceptions, but mostly genre uses a dystopian scenario to shock and thrill, and sometimes even suggests the inevitability of such dystopia. As someone who has been teaching the sci-fi, genre, gothic fiction for years – because I took and take them seriously – I am now becoming a bit worried about the ways in which they actually obfuscate serious matters, and allow students/readers to avoid thinking about them. Of course, there are exceptions. As Michael Moorcock, himself a genre writer, concedes too – when he expresses his hatred of Tolkien-type genre writing.

''The Guardian commenters are probably after Ghosh because he has been very sceptical of the liberal-leftist agenda that defines them… ''

MOST **RECOMMENDED** COMMENTS:

''Such a long article from someone who clearly can't see outside of the ghetto of Literary Fiction, meanwhile publishers put the vast number of novels set in a future affected by climate change into the category of Science Fiction. Open your eyes and make some effort''An Indian friend of mine, a scientist, who has about had it up to here with Dr Ghosh's anti-genre biases, tells me today: "Snowwalling, I have stopped reading Amitav Ghosh's crap on climate change.

To me, Cli fi is already an incredibly rich genre and there are a lot written if you can only seek. Enough for me to read for a very long time.
There is so much already written on this topic, the science is transparent, and very clearly written, climate change and global warming are warped and weft with our lives, everything we do, there is drama and stories everywhere, people continue to write about it, the whole thriving genre of cli fi movies, notes, the richness of literature and creativity around the theme of climate science is staggering. What more does one expect?

If AG wants to be a Johny-come-lately wannabe rockstar, it is his choice.

I suppose some of us can’t be bothered by his posturing and antics. Let him write."

Err... David Mitchell also springs to mind,with Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, and John Brunner in the early 70's; The Sheep Look Up, etc.
The main problem is that the environment, the world of a story, is generally the context, not the subject, with Ballard et al providing rare exceptions.
Writing a narrative set in any future world affected by climate change is not so difficult, but making that world the main focus is much harder.

my 2 comments under snowwalling name

dan

When Dr Ghosh starts off his cockamamie oped this way, you know he did not do his homework, since every major newspaper or book review in the UK and USA has reviewed climate-themed novels in the scifi and clifi genres: "It is a simple fact that climate change has a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion. As proof of this, we need only glance through the pages of literary journals and book reviews. When the subject of climate change occurs, it is almost always in relation to nonfiction; novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon. Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.'' Amitavji, my friend, the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Slate, Salon, Grist, Inverse and even the New York Times has taken note of genre novels about climate since at least 2013, including NPR the USA radio network, and in the UK the BBC and the Guardian itself has published articles, opeds, and reviews about climate-themed novels and movies since 2013 as well. Who are you kidding, sir? Please come down to Earth and deal with what it, not with what you think is. Because as you can see from the many comments here, you are so so wrong about this. PLEASE, SIR, WAKE UP! You are hurting your own cause.

and

OTHERS

By definition a story that deals with extrapolation of current events or "what if" ideas is Science Fiction .
It is intellectual snobbery to consider such work as being relegated to some second division. Some of the most interesting writing is going on in this genre and if you wouldn't read it because of the label then you are the loser.

With a few exceptions, the literary mind doesn't 'do' science very well. We can see the worst examples of this in what happens when film scriptwriters attempt to tackle climate change - Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow being the most egregious efforts.
That said, I was impressed by The Road. We aren't told what the cataclysmic event was in the film, but an asteroid strike is the most likely explanation, given the environmental depiction. This would have caused huge climatic upheaval, including a global shut down of photosynthesis. A supervolcano eruption is another possible explanation.

There's an eccentric Irish political clan - beloved by many people in their area, and regarded as a national flatcap-wearing joke by the rest of the country - who've produced some fiction on global warming, all right (though not the kind of fiction that you mean).
A few months ago, the country buried its face in its hands when one of them insisted that there couldn't possibly be anything like global warming, because God had made everything everywhere, and it was crazy to say that Man could disrupt God's plan. Facepalm.
Now, a few days ago, another theory: sure anyway, if there is anything like global warming, it's all because of... The Nukes. All those nuclear tests have disrupted things - but that's not the same as Man being responsible, oh no!
These people have been elected to power, though not, thankfully, into the Government. Even though every government body everywhere has a few quacks and eccentrics in the back seats, this kind of stuff is unfortunate.

Sadly Dr Ghosh who lives in the VIP elite mansion of "literary" fiction, as opposed to those outhouse gutter low rent genres of "illiterary" fiction like sci-fi and spec fiction and clifi and ecofiction which he so loathes from his mansion in Broolyn, sadly Amitavji is proscriptive about what kinds of fictions novelists in the West can deploy to talk about climate change issues. For him, "it's my way or the highway. " He is so wrong. JG BALLARD started the ball rolling in the 1960s. Wake up Dr Ghosh. Do you homework. Genre fiction rocks and can dance circles around so called literary fiction.

Damn right. Snowwalling, You beat me to it with Ballard, he was ahead of nearly everybody on climate change. And lots of other stuff too. When you look at the world at the moment Super Cannes and Cocaine Nights don't seem too far removed from current reality.

It is not simply fiction that weds us to the outdated and irrelevant cultural norms that make it difficult to confront climate change. It is language itself, with the typical transitive clause reinforcing the idea that we can dominate or control nature and the web of metaphors that make us feel, for example, that freedom is space to move and more is good. See Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology.

J G Ballard is the first name that springs to my mind when thinking of writers who write presciently of climate change, particularly The Drowned World and The Burning World. Literary fiction may simply be the wrong genre, but in science fiction it's not exactly an unusual theme. Strange use of the word 'relegate' there, as though science fiction is somehow an unworthy genre.

Absolutely. That the artic!e ignores Ballard's 1960s climate fiction seems extraordinary - and Ballard isn't even a ghettoised sci-fi writer, he's about as literary mainstream as they come.
Not that Ballard's fiction was about climate-change as a human-inspired phenomenon (any more than High Rise was about class warfare), but that hardly disqualifies it...

Yes, he's pretty sneering about science fiction, which is apparently a generic outhouse surrounding the manor house of literary fiction. He seems to have forgotten that aristocrats living in manors are rarely the first to see the future coming, especially when they don't pay attention to what's going on in the outhouses.
He seems to have completely missed David Brin's Earth and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, as well as the Ballard novels you mentioned.

There are few fiction novels which as part of their underlying theme express to the reader a responsibility of their own actions whether past, present or future. Thus climate fiction could be perceived as a bit of a turn off for the publishing houses?

Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Green Planet' is a novel covering the practice of science and the effects of climate change... highly recommended
It is also the most optimistic book I've ever read - even in the face of catastrophic weather induced by climate change, the protagonist meets each challenge with ingenuity, compassion and resolve.

I think the problem is amplified by limiting the field to the somewhat arbitrary constraints of what is regarded as literary fiction. Given that climate change is a nightmare whose worst episodes are yet to come, the genre of cli-fi (speculative fiction that is focused on climate change) is where the action is... and there is some marvellous work happening in that field.

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable is published by University of Chicago.

comments (19)

We have had such a wet winter here that the ground is sodden. Combined with recent high winds there has been a hell of a lot of trees falling down. It scares the living bejesus out of me, because it reminds me of the falling trees in The Road. The fact there is no explanation for why the trees are falling in the movie makes it creepier!

Good points-but depends on a narrow definition of 'literary'. Kim Stanley Robinson has spent most of his career writing novels about climate change. He probably reaches many more readers than the 'lit-fict' genre.

I refer the panel to Dark Mountain Projects and their writing manifesto. They produce a volume of essays and poetry every quarter I believe. Writing from China, I hope to submit to the forthcoming issues.

Well, I was thinking about writing about climate change, but unfortunately the effects of it are largely / initially going to be felt by people in the developing world.
And I'd HATE to be accused of cultural appropriation.
But when climate change starts to effect Leeds, I'll be sure to write about it.

Strange that the Dark Mountain Project wasn't mentioned in this article:
'The Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself. We see that the world is entering an age of ecological collapse, material contraction and social and political unravelling, and we want our cultural responses to reflect this reality rather than denying it.'http://dark-mountain.net/about/the-dark-mountain-project/

"the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel."
'Relegate'? Interesting insight into the author's view of science fiction, especially when we're regularly sending probes to other planets. Of course SF, which has long been a literature set on exploring contemporary trends, has amassed a substantial body of work on climate change, some of it going back to before the current thinking on the subject, when the possibility of a new Ice Age was still being discussed, most memorably in Arthur C Clarke's "The Forgotten Enemy" (1949).
But moving to contemporary views of climate change, we see it featured in books like David Brin's Earth (1990), Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather (1994) and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (2012), the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007) and arguably Green Mars (1994). In contemporary works by other SF authors, climate change is simply part of the accepted background, but then SF/F has always been a literature accepting of change.

Err... David Mitchell also springs to mind,with Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, and John Brunner in the early 70's; The Sheep Look Up, etc.
The main problem is that the environment, the world of a story, is generally the context, not the subject, with Ballard et al providing rare exceptions.
Writing a narrative set in any future world affected by climate change is not so difficult, but making that world the main focus is much harder.

Maybe because climate change is simply a non-event. It has a big presence in the contemporary zeitgeist and on the pages of the newspapers, as well as in the models of the scientists, but as an actual, experienceable thing, it is simply non-existent. There are no people in the western world dealing in the slightest way with the effects of climate change, and as for the developing world, whatever impacts they're suffering are almost entirely due to poverty, not to the changing climate. Giving a central role in any non-science fiction work to something that can, at the moment, be measured only with the tools of statistics- it's a recipe for literary disaster.

Maybe such apocalyptic fiction depends on a time and place. I'm thinking of the 1950s and 1960s when there were a number of science fiction novels about a nuclear war or disaster, some of which were made into movies (e.g., On the Beach). Since then there have been novels about virulent disease that escapes (e.g., Andromeda Strain). Is Ghosh saying global climate change is missing from recent scifi, or is he limiting his remarks to his sense of "literary" fiction?

I wonder how much fiction also features the depletion of the oceans, the 6th extinction caused by man, and even the mundane like peak oil or pandemic caused by over use of antibiotics.
Outside of genres like scifi which have the freedom to express big concepts on a small stage big issues appear just too big for us humans who like our stories personal and petty.
I'm working with a writer to supply information on the science of what our planet and civilisation will look like in a bad [but no so bad that all civilisations is lost] outcome in 500 years post AGW. A strangely horrifying outcome is even with some kind of stable civilisation in the future they will be locked in a permanent technological height of the 1930s simply because there will not be the huge resources we have now of people and wealth that enables so energy to go into building something like a microchip factory.
Concentrate on the human story of survival and you end up with the road or any number of post apocalyptic narratives- and with disaster you might as well write a long tale of people coping badly with debt over a lifetime.
Stories are personal - they are storms or discoveries, loss and recovery and the human attention span is stretched if the time span is, so they can be simply be local storms, or personal loss like we have always had.

Well, the sub-genre of cli-fi, as it's known, is making steady headway at the margins of our culture. There'a a new magazine called Into the Ruins which features stories about post-industrial life and climate change scenarios. It is worth checking out.

The subject matter is of such gravity as to frighten many fiction writers.
Much of modern art is a form of escapism, many artists produce fey and effete work, so as to not frighten their public, and perhaps marginalise their work.
I had this thought some time ago regarding popular music.
If ever there was a time for a protest song, it is now, but the industry is awash with music that is bleating incoherently about love.
PJ Harvey released a very good protest album recently, and was shot down to a degree for it.
So the truth hurts.
Fiction seems to have an historic obsession at the moment, which is handy, as you don't need to be looking to the future.
"After London" is a possible early contender, by R Jefferies.

Well, I was thinking about writing about climate change, but unfortunately the effects of it are largely / initially going to be felt by people in the developing world.
And I'd HATE to be accused of cultural appropriation.
But when climate change starts to effect Leeds, I'll be sure to write about it.

Strange that the Dark Mountain Project wasn't mentioned in this article:
'The Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself. We see that the world is entering an age of ecological collapse, material contraction and social and political unravelling, and we want our cultural responses to reflect this reality rather than denying it.'http://dark-mountain.net/about/the-dark-mountain-project/

"the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel."
'Relegate'? Interesting insight into the author's view of science fiction, especially when we're regularly sending probes to other planets. Of course SF, which has long been a literature set on exploring contemporary trends, has amassed a substantial body of work on climate change, some of it going back to before the current thinking on the subject, when the possibility of a new Ice Age was still being discussed, most memorably in Arthur C Clarke's "The Forgotten Enemy" (1949).
But moving to contemporary views of climate change, we see it featured in books like David Brin's Earth (1990), Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather (1994) and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (2012), the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007) and arguably Green Mars (1994). In contemporary works by other SF authors, climate change is simply part of the accepted background, but then SF/F has always been a literature accepting of change.

I was going to say, I can think of a number of novels that deal both explicitly and implicitly with climate change. You have mentioned them all here. I would also add in Baxter's Proxima and John Christopher's works such as the Death of Grass and the World in Winter. We could also at a stretch include Frank Herbert's Dune novels but as that is non terrestrial perhaps that one is questionable.
As you say, this analysis says more about the conceits of the author and the somewhat myopic view of what constitutes literature.

''Such a long article from someone who clearly can't see outside of the ghetto of Literary Fiction, meanwhile publishers put the vast number of novels set in a future affected by climate change into the category of Science Fiction. Open your eyes and make some effort''

Thank you for a brilliant article. As a social scientist studying how people are integrating their awareness of climate change in their daily life, I agree that most people in Europe don't have the words, images or narratives to express their fears and aspirations. Literature could do a lot to help conjure futures that are not despairingly dystopian, thus offering desirable objectives to drive necessary transformations. There are a lot of young startups and passionate projects suggesting small positive changes (see hundreds of them in https://beta.iywto.com but we are missing a grander narrative...

UK COMMENTER: "What an utterly inane, pointless article" by Dr Ghosh
American commenter: Though this exact thesis and subject has been repeated in the media since last summer--probably to promote the book--the imagination in fiction is quite strong and alive, actually. One needs only to truly research the novels being written currently and within the past few decades. There are not just a few novels addressing climate change in some capacity, but literally hundreds. There are databases of notable fiction in all genres as well as dozens of interviews with authors and even academic studies on climate change within fiction. Courses are being taught on the subject as well.
The argument about novels needing to be literary to have merit or impact would be difficult to defend, in my opinion. And science fiction is not all about outer space and flying squids--in fact, science fiction has traditionally looked at both real and imagined science and has explored near or far future effects of our own doings, if we continue down the path we're on--which is every much as realistic as contemporary fiction looking at the now. The world as we made it, and where it is heading on our built path, is a valid subject in literary and speculative fiction, wherein the genre lines actually are sometimes blurry, even if there are some subjects that fly off into space or into fantasy. Also, to be genuinely concerned about this issue of *global* warming, we need *global* literature, which means going beyond just literary fiction. It seems elitist to ignore every other genre, when, in fact, the world is made up of diverse readers and writers--and everyone needs to get on board with this!
The problem is not the failure of imagination (though it would be *great* to see more authors take it on!) but in the media exposure of this fiction. Very few thorough investigative reports have looked at climate change and the broad environmental picture in fiction; the only articles I see are sadly saying: a) there is a literary imaginative failure when dealing with climate change (when there isn't) or b) there is a "new" genre covering it, when in actuality, though there are other newish genres (climate fiction, solarpunk, Anthropocene fiction, and possibly more), there are also several traditional genres that capture climate change in fiction; sometimes science fiction is given credit (the godfather of environmental fiction, along with earlier roots of contemporary ecofiction). Otherwise, it seems that the media narrative is lacking too, and the voice is narrow here and given only to a few who have actual access to the media. And, thus, the narrative is misleading or fails to be in-depth. [Of course she would say that!]
Back to the books--neither climate change nor its related literature is new. We've known about anthropogenic climate change for decades, and so have authors who have written about it. And climate change can be handled in multiple genres--you name it.
Climate change is immersed into all facets of life now and will continue to be so. Margaret Atwood called it "the everything change."
Open your eyes and see the wide imaginative embrace of hundreds of artists and authors as they try to tackle this difficult subject. Maybe some of us have failed, because the hyperobject is the largest issue writers have ever tried to depict in fiction--true, more authors need to try. But more have not failed. Where is their recognition? It's a shame when a regarded writer such as Ghosh chooses to not lift up the authors who have gone out on a limb to tackle climate change--rather you have chosen to paint with a wide brush the failure of the lot.

Do not forget that this is the writer who won Britain's premiere and most prestigious award for science fiction, the Arthur C Clarke Aware, for his novel "The Calcutta Chromosome". The paperback edition did not even mention the award on the cover.
He is bigoted and prejudiced against SF, as can be shown by his intentional limitation to exclude the type of books he is actually writing about (and indeed writing):
"literary novelists writing in English"
He then cites several authors of award-winning SF.
Yet he loftily ignores superb novels such as Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science in the Capital" trilogy: "Forty Signs of Rain", "Fifty Degrees Below" and "Sixty Days and Counting".

_The Water Knife_, by Paolo Bacigalupi, is a novel about climate change and water rights in the American west. I enjoyed it so much I went and read the nonfiction history of western water, _Cadillac Desert_.

Or, to put it another way -- "I don't read SF".
The definition of SF is stories about a changing world -- if you don't read it you're not going to find many stories about the way the world is changing.